Site Navigation

Site Mobile Navigation

Kim Jong-il’s Heir Attends Parade

SEOUL, South Korea — The North Korean leader, Kim Jong-il, attended a massive military parade with his youngest son and designated successor on Sunday as the ruling Communist government celebrated the 65th anniversary of the founding of its Workers’ Party.

The son, Kim Jong-un, wearing a dark suit despite his recent promotion to four-star general, watched the festivities and reviewed squads of goose-stepping troops with his 68-year-old father and other senior politicians and generals. The event was held in Kim Il-sung Square, named for Kim Jong-un’s grandfather, the founder of the North Korean state.

Photo

orth Korean soldiers march in a parade celebrating the 65th anniversary of the ruling Korean Workers Party in Pyongyang.Credit
Miguel Toran/European Pressphoto Agency

Video from the celebration in Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, showed tens of thousands of performers and soldiers arrayed in what was said to be the largest such event in the country’s history. For the first time, a few dozen Western news media organizations, including some American outlets, were allowed to attend the festivities and report live from the square.

The elder Mr. Kim, who is said to be in poor health after having suffered a stroke in 2008, has hurried the succession of Kim Jong-un in recent weeks. At a Workers’ Party meeting last month, Kim Jong-un was made a general and received two significant positions in the party.

Other members of the Kim family and the leader’s inner circle also received new posts and promotions as the leadership hierarchy was reshuffled to provide Kim Jong-un with mentors and supporters as he solidifies his power.

Photo

North Korean soldiers march in a parade through Kim Il Sung Square.Credit
KCNA, via European Pressphoto Agency

Little is known about Kim Jong-un, who is believed to be 27 or 28. He is the youngest of Mr. Kim’s three sons — the older brothers were uninterested or deemed incapable of leadership — and he attended school for a time in Bern, Switzerland. He is known to speak some English, and he most likely speaks German as well. Until last month’s party meeting, very few pictures of him had been seen in public.

The Workers’ Party anniversary is typically a major national holiday in North Korea, with people receiving food handouts from the government. The theme of the celebration Sunday was heavily military, befitting Kim Jong-il’s guiding philosophy of “songun,” or military first. Nuclear-armed North Korea has a huge standing army, with 1.2 million soldiers, and its border with South Korea is one of the world’s most heavily militarized.

There was no immediate reaction from the South Korean government to Sunday’s parade in the North, but the conservative administration of President Lee Myung-bak has taken a hard line against North Korea, and relations between the two countries remain strained. The South blames a North Korean torpedo attack for the sinking in March of one of its naval vessels, the Cheonan, that killed 46 sailors. The North has denied any role in the sinking.